Apple

Spark is the closest to how Inbox use to be. At least in my experience so that's what I'm using these days.

My Apple mail kept opening for no reason so I just switched to MailMate. It's a simple IMAP interface with a ton of backend options and hidden command line settings for the techies, a heavy-lifter email app. It's a one time payment and is as powerful or simple as you need it to be. Originally written around 2010 and still updated, it's a very mature program.

I’m also using Spark; I like it but don’t love it. I often think about switching back to Apple Mail, but Spark’s block button is just too convenient. If junk mail filtering in Mail worked better, I’d switch.

I’ve been trying to find a good one, but it seems like all e-mail clients are bloated as hell. Like Jesus Christ I just want to read and reply to emails, I don’t need chatGPT, teams, calendars, real-time whatever the fuck, just… just email.

I use Fastmail for my personal email so I just use their app for that, and the gmail app for my business email. I’d much rather have both in one app but I don’t want the shit all these devs are putting in.

thank you for all the great feedback. I will take a look at some of the apps as soon as I'm back from my honeymoon!

for the next days i go with the standard mail app from apple just because I realized that I don't need all that fancy stuff. Let's see how that will work out for me...

I cannot recommend Canary Mail enough. It’s like the redesigned Mail.app that Apple themselves should have made. Looks, works and feels like a system app that Apple shipped, but adds a ton of neat stuff like PGP encryption, read receipts, GPT-powered email composition and email thread summaries, and more.

Most email apps on iOS and macOS route emails through their private servers which is a security risk. This risk magnifies when one has also set up their work accounts on their devices.

Also, many email apps cater to Gmail, which I understand is the most popular email service, but prohibits me from using with my accounts.

Therefore, the native, default mail clients on both platforms is what I use.

Do let me know if there are email clients that do not reroute one’s emails. I would love to try those out.

i tried some of the clients but neither satisfied me like gmail does.

The search, the functionality and also the swipe behavior of the native apple client is way worse then the gmail client. This also terminated the use of an icloud mail adress, so I forwarded this to my gmail.

I also do not want another account for my email client just to access my mails, so most of the other clients were out of the race. In the end I stick to my gmail account and it's app, cause it satisfies me the most.

Thanks again for all your answers :)

Going to show my privilege here and say Superhuman. It’s expensive as hell, but if you’re like me and email is a major part of your job, it may be worth it. I can get the gmail web client to do about 90% of what Superhuman does, though. So for an economical version, perhaps look up a guide on how to setup and use the Gmail web interface with nothing but a keyboard. In my experience, taking the time to learn how to navigate your inbox in this way pays dividends down the road. Good luck!